Wrong. You are totally misrepresenting my argument. I've pointed out that your position contains a logical inconsistency, while mine does not.

As Simon as been pointing out to Kuroneko for at least a page and a half, there is no logical inconsistency inherent to asking "why" the universe exists.

Lie #1: you were proposing the theory of God, not merely asking "why". You're changing the subject. That's strike 1.

However, I have shown how your position contains a built-in logical inconsistency, while mine does not.

Once again, no. Apart from simply repeating the same overly demonstrative declarations over and over again, you haven't really "proven" much of anything.

Lie #2: I explained the inconsistency in your logic which you simply ignored. You also refused to even quote it despite being directly reminded to do so, so I will repeat it: the God theory is based on the premise that the existence of everything must have an external cause: a premise for which you arbitrarily make an exception in the case of God. That is a logical inconsistency. My argument does not include your premise, hence it treats the idea of the universe and the idea of God equally, rather than making arbitrary exceptions, ie- logical inconsistencies. That's strike 2: you were directly challenged to answer this point, and you chose not to. In fact, you even snipped out the part where you were challenged! This is absolutely unbelievable.

This has been my point all along. You are attempting to draw an absolute where none can really be proven to exist.

Your "point"? I demanded that you answer my point about the inconsistency and you simply snipped that part out of your reply. This is totally unacceptable.

Time and existence are objective concepts.

No, they most certainly are not. The very fact that we are having this discussion proves otherwise.

Your ability to disagree does not prove anything, you idiot. Do you want to know the difference between the layman's concept of time and the scientist's concept of time? The layman's concept of time was proven wrong when the Apollo astronauts confirmed Einstein's predictions on time dilation with the simple observation of retarded chronometers.

Once again, why your strictly literalist interpretations of these concepts may not be technically wrong from a scientific point of view, they are hardly the only interpretations possible.

If you want us to believe that ONLY a literalist cosmological interpretation of "time" and "existence" can be correct, you are going to have to PROVE that this is the case. You can't simply declare it to be so and expect everyone else in the world to simply fall in line.

Einstein was right, and you are wrong. The Apollo astronauts (among many others) proved it. The fact that you don't understand that is not my problem, moron.

You are talking about cosmology: the nature and history of the universe.

I am talking about philosophical questions which science and cosmology have either failed to answer or chosen to purposely ignore.

Wrong. You are talking about an empty philosophical question which is intrinsically unanswerable. As I pointed out in the post directly subsequent to my previous post to you, any kind of universal "why" would only produce an infinite regression.

What you are doing here would be akin to trying to explain the question "what is love" in strictly biological terms. Sure, you might, technically be able to get away with it by spinning enough jargon, but in the end, you'd really just be missing the point by a major margin and going needlessly out of your way in the process.

Nice false analogy. Love is an emotion, not a physics concept. Time and existence are physics concepts. The fact that those physics concepts differ from layperson notions is not proof that laypersons have some kind of superior understanding; it is proof that laypersons don't know what they're talking about. Time dilation, for example, is real whether you understand it or not. Einstein's notion of time is superior to yours because it has been observed to be so. You have the most incredible arrogance: to think that your personal subjective notion of time is actually philosophically superior to the scientific one, by virtue of being less defined.

I also expect you to address the fact that your harping on "why" is a red-herring since it confers no advantage to either argument, not to mention Occam's Razor which I mentioned before and which you (again) chose to ignore.

As Simon has been pointing out for quite a while now, there is no "red herring." The fact that "why" might not be necessary to answer the question of "how" does not mean that it is logically inconsistent to ask if such a question exists.

That is absolutely incredible. I directly demanded that you stop this convenient snipping of points you can't answer, and what did you do? You snipped out most of the paragraph listing things I wanted you to answer! Absolutely incredible. That's strike 3.

My only point here has been to say that we don't really know for sure whether a "why" could exist, and that, therefore, the modern secularist practice of simply downplaying or avoiding the question entirely is logically and philosophically problematic.

Bullshit. You don't even know what "logically and philosophically problematic" is. There is nothing logically inconsistent about saying "don't know, don't care, might not even be one" to the question of a reason behind existence itself, and if something is logically consistent, then it's fine. In fact, you know you can't find a logical inconsistency in the scientific argument, which is why you use the meaningless accusation of "problematic". Precisely what logical or philosophical "problem" have you identified in the argument, other than the fact that you have some emotional problem with simply concluding that no universal reason is necessary?

If a "why" does not exist, then we have missed nothing. However, if it turns out that a "why" does exist to supplement the "how," we run the risk of simply throwing up a wall of willful ignorance against a discovery which could prove vital to understanding the universe in its entirety (regardless of whether this 'why' turns out to be a deity or something far more mundane).

If a "why" exists, then it begs the question of why this "why" exists, you idiot. The problem is inherently unsolvable, which is why the mere act of demanding a universal "why" is philosophically vacuous and the act of describing its absence as a "problem" is either dishonest, stupid, or both.

It is not enough to simply delcare that something is "irrelevant" or does not "exist." You have to PROVE that this is the case if you want to end all debate on the matter. So far, no one has done so.

I have proven four things:

1) That there is an inconsistency in the First Mover argument: it recognizes the idea that a First Mover is possible (ie- God) but it refuses to acknowledge that if a First Mover is possible, then there is no reason to insist that the universe cannot be that First Mover. Ergo, you are simply wrong and the "God as First Mover" theory has a logical inconsistency which the "Universe as First Mover" theory does not.

2) That the question of a universal "why" is philosophically vacuous because it leads to infinite regression, just like the First Mover theory. If you insist on asking "why" for everything, then one must logically ask "why" for whatever answer there is to "why", and then again, and then again, ad infinitum.

3) That Albert Einstein's notion of time was proven superior to the layperson's notion of time, by mentioning a particular Apollo astronaut observation that was consistent with his predictions. Frankly, it's unbelievable that you were even demanding this. What kind of lunatic would seriously think that an uneducated person's notion of time is somehow philosophically superior to the scientific one, or even equal to it? I can't believe the kind of arrogance it must have taken to declare that your personal made-up definition of time (which, by the way, you never even bothered defining) is superior to the one used in all of physics.

4) That you are a liar. You proposed God as a solution to the First Mover problem, and then pretended you were merely "asking why", when you had in fact proposed a solution and claimed it to be no more problematic than the scientific solution. You ignored my explanation of the logical inconsistency in the God solution twice: once after my demand that you not ignore it again. You even had the gall to snip out not only my description of the inconsistency but also the part of my subsequent post where I demanded that you go back and answer it. And then you actually claimed that I had never pointed out any such inconsistency! In fact, your entire tactic has been to snip out the most salient parts of my posts to you in your responses, and then reply only to pieces of my paragraphs which appear vague enough that you can manufacture answers that evade the actual points being made.

This is totally unacceptable. I have not seen such a blatant display of dishonesty since RSA, and you are history.

"It's not evil for God to do it. Or for someone to do it at God's command."- Jonathan Boyd on baby-killing

"you guys are fascinated with the use of those "rules of logic" to the extent that you don't really want to discussus anything."- GC

"I do not believe Russian Roulette is a stupid act" - Embracer of Darkness

Thank god he's gone. His habit of redefining everything to suit his agenda and asserting that others have no clue about philosophy and political science is extremely annoying, just like how he tried to redefine marxism in his other debate.

Humans are such funny creatures. We are selfish about selflessness, yet we can love something so much that we can hate something.

Predictably, the moron E-mailed, angrily claiming that he was banned merely for disagreeing (even though he's been doing that for weeks and wasn't banned until it became blatantly obvious that he would never answer or even acknowledge certain points, and would snip out any part of any post asking him to). How shocking. Do people like this not understand that any member of the public can read this and decide for themselves what happened?

For a time, I considered sparing your wretched little planet Cybertron.
But now, you shall witnesss ... its dismemberment!"This is what happens when you use trivia napkins for research material"- Sea Skimmer on "Pearl Harbour".
"Do you work out? Your hands are so strong! Especially the right one!"- spoken to Bud Bundy

Whoever says "education does not matter" can try ignorance
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A decision must be made in the life of every nation at the very moment when the grasp of the enemy is at its throat. Then, it seems that the only way to survive is to use the means of the enemy, to rest survival upon what is expedient, to look the other way. Well, the answer to that is 'survival as what'? A country isn't a rock. It's not an extension of one's self. It's what it stands for. It's what it stands for when standing for something is the most difficult! - Chief Judge Haywood
------------My LPs